As witness after witness misleads, lies to, and stonewalls congressional investigations into Obama administration scandals, I can't escape the feeling that we are witnessing the second coming of Richard Nixon, with all the inglorious Watergate-era trappings. The myth of "Hope And Change" is long gone. President Obama's claim to head "the most transparent administration in history," has been reduced to a cruel irony. It has been replaced by a series of thin denials, doubletalk, and coverups, which are proving to be ever more specious practically by the day. We have people being persecuted by the IRS for their political beliefs, investigative reporters being threatened with prosecution for doing their jobs, and investigations into the deaths of four American patriots in Benghazi being called a political witchhunt, as if the deaths themselves, and the failures leading to them, are meaningless. Is this America ? In the words of Sarah Palin, you betcha.

I remember how disillusioning it was for me as a young man watching the Watergate hearings back in the 70's. I had never been a Nixon fan, but the Watergate proceedings were when it first hit home to me that the government is a dangerous master which must be limited and controlled to the greatest extent possible. That's when I first truly understood the words, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." That's when I first started trending toward becoming an advocate of limited government, as intended by our wise founding fathers. I have seen nothing in the intervening years to convince me otherwise. If I have learned anything about politics, it is this - any power given to the government will be abusedby the government. The more power the government acquires, the worse the abuse will be. This has been proven true not only here in America, but all over the world and all throughout history. Thomas Jefferson, who was likely the first man to advocate the ideal of individual liberty in newly-born America, described it as his life's work "to see the standard of reason at length erected after so many ages during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles." There are various entities with the potential to enslave the people, but the government is chief among these. The government can take away your money. The government can take away your voice. The government can take away your liberty. The government can do all these things because the government is backed by force. The only thing that can stop the government is "we the people", and judging from recent elections, a good number of "we the people" seem more interested in directing the public treasury into our own pockets than in maintaining independence and integrity. The inevitable result of this attitude is more corruption and an ever-weakening republic.

Before I leave town and change my name to avoid an IRS audit, I thought I'd leave you with some topical political humor:

"This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate hearings. For those of you too young to remember, back then the administration had an enemies list. They were spying on reporters, and they used the IRS to harass groups they didn't like. Thank God those days are gone forever." –Jay Leno

When the Fast And Furious gunwalking scandal broke, following the deaths of border agent Brian Terry and a few hundred Mexicans, President Obama said he didn't know anything about it. Attorney General Eric Holder said he didn't know anything about it either, even though records proved that Holder's immediate underlings at Justice knew about it. Subsequently, it was discovered that Holder lied to Congress about his knowledge of Fast And Furious (in spite of that, he is STILL Obama's Attorney General. Go figure).

When the Benghazi talking points were scrubbed of references to an al-Qaeda affiliated group being behind the attack, and also scrubbed of the CIA's warnings about a coming attack at Benghazi, President Obama said he had nothing to do with it. He didn't know anything about it, even though the talking points were changed 12 times, and even though CIA chief David Petraeus said the altered talking points were "essentially useless" and were the White House's call. Obama also claimed to know nothing about requests for increased security at Benghazi being denied.

The IRS has admitted to targeting conservative groups in 2011 and 2012. The IRS admitted these things, not because they are forthright and wanted to admit their "mistakes", but because they got caught. They were about to be exposed in the agency's Inspector General (IG) report, which has not yet been released, but has been leaked to the press. Prior to the report's findings, the IRS had denied all wrongdoing going back to 2011. From The Washington Post:

The report said the IRS targeted groups with names containing “tea party” and “patriot” and that delays occurred in processing returns of conservative applicants, said the aide, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss information that has not been released to the public.

The Executive Branch of the federal government withheld information from the public for political purposes during a presidential election. That's what happened with Benghazi, where the CIA talking points were scrubbed by the Executive Branch.

The Executive Branch of the federal government harassed members of the opposition. That's what happened when the IRS, which is under the scope of the Executive Branch (Treasury), unfairly targeted Tea Party groups prior to the 2012 presidential election.

Here's what we know so far about the Obama administration's coverup and culpability for the killings of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012:

1) Five days after the attack, UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on the sunday television talk shows as a spokesperson for the Obama administration and falsely blamed the Benghazi attack on a protest over an anti-Muslim YouTube video. The Obama administration knew full well by that time that there was no protest at Benghazi. What occurred was a planned terrorist attack and nothing else. Why the Obama administration had Ms. Rice promote such a falsehood has been the subject of speculation. Many believe it was because the presidential election was so close, and the Benghazi terrorist attack disproved the President's contention that he had reduced the terrorist threat.

That phrase should be defined in the dictionary as "the shutting down and regimentation of the human mind", because it is largely a device used by political hacks to control people and prevent them from thinking "impure" thoughts, as if that's possible. It isn't, and if it ever does come about, that would be truly frightening. It would result in a Stepford Thousand Year Reich robot culture that would make Jonestown look like Disneyland.

My liberal blogger pal the Reverend is stoking fears of an armed right-wing rebellion again. He does this every so often to remind people how scary are those right-wing bogeymen. After all, the Reverend did see a picture of a guy at a Tea Party rally carrying a rifle once. Definitive proof that the coup is just around the corner, lol. Pass him the smelling salts, and somebody please look to see if any right-wing monsters are hiding under his bed.

But perhaps the Reverend has a point. Who can forget all those right-wing mass murderers from the last century, like Mao, Stalin, Hitler (of the National SOCIALIST Party), Pol Pot, etc....well, okay, all those genocidal atrocities were committed by left-wing centralized control governments of the type the Reverend supports, not by limited government liberty advocates like myself, but why let facts get in the way ?